Ken Gruebel: Suspense novel a real page turner

Published: Saturday, May 11, 2013 at 03:23 PM.

SIX YEARS, by Harlan Coben, Dutton, 351 pages, $27.95

It is not often that this ancient reader stays up well past his normal bed time just to read deeper into a book. Sometimes, not often but sometimes, I may have the good intentions of reading into the night, only to doze off midway into a chapter that has not yielded the promised excitement.

This never ever, happens with a book written by Harlan Coben. I would guess an author with at least twenty best sellers over the recent years would capture and hold just about everyone’s interest.

So it is with this story. Professor Jake Fisher teaches English at a small college. The college may be small but Jake is pretty big, a tad over six feet five inches in height and the build to carry this height with impunity.

And he is in love, madly in love with Natalie. Then one heart breaking day his whole world crumbles. Natalie announces she is getting married to someone else. She invites Jake to her wedding in a small, out of the way church. He sees the groom to be, and is told by Natalie that she does not want Jake to interfere, in fact she tells him that she doesn’t want him to have anything at all to do with the new couple.

Back to teaching at college, this time with a broken heart.

But this is not the end. Two thugs kidnap Jake and demand he tell them where Natalie is. Of course he is unable to supply them with any information because he himself doesn’t know where she is. He surprises the thugs and gets the upper hand and escapes, but he still is no closer to finding his lost love. Later there is a story that Natalie’s husband has died but there is no confirmation. Television news pictures of the funeral show what appears to be an entirely different man. When Jake goes to see the man’s widow he is convinced there has been a swindle of monumental proportions.

It is not often that this ancient reader stays up well past his normal bed time just to read deeper into a book. Sometimes, not often but sometimes, I may have the good intentions of reading into the night, only to doze off midway into a chapter that has not yielded the promised excitement.

This never ever, happens with a book written by Harlan Coben. I would guess an author with at least twenty best sellers over the recent years would capture and hold just about everyone’s interest.

So it is with this story. Professor Jake Fisher teaches English at a small college. The college may be small but Jake is pretty big, a tad over six feet five inches in height and the build to carry this height with impunity.

And he is in love, madly in love with Natalie. Then one heart breaking day his whole world crumbles. Natalie announces she is getting married to someone else. She invites Jake to her wedding in a small, out of the way church. He sees the groom to be, and is told by Natalie that she does not want Jake to interfere, in fact she tells him that she doesn’t want him to have anything at all to do with the new couple.

Back to teaching at college, this time with a broken heart.

But this is not the end. Two thugs kidnap Jake and demand he tell them where Natalie is. Of course he is unable to supply them with any information because he himself doesn’t know where she is. He surprises the thugs and gets the upper hand and escapes, but he still is no closer to finding his lost love. Later there is a story that Natalie’s husband has died but there is no confirmation. Television news pictures of the funeral show what appears to be an entirely different man. When Jake goes to see the man’s widow he is convinced there has been a swindle of monumental proportions.

Other efforts to track down Natalie by friends with access to income tax returns and other governmental agencies, also fail.

Is this a satisfactory book? By all means. It was, for this reader at least, the kind of story it was impossible to put down.

Our younger son sent me a copy of Damon Runyan’s “Guys and Dolls.” So I will conclude this portion of the review by saying SIX YEARS is a lot better than somewhat, a true Damon Runyan quote.

Also read this week, OFF THE GRID, by P.J. Tracy,G.P.Putnam’s Sons,305pp,$25.95. P.J. Tracy is the pseudonym of Patricia Lambrecht and Traci Lambrecht, a mother-daughter writing team. The story is subtitled “A Monkeewrench Novel”. I guess I would have had to read earlier stories by this team to fully understand what Monkeewrench means but the closest I could ascertain from this story is that it is a huge computer situated in a large mansion in Minneapolis and operated by a group of people who live on and love gigabytes and other bits of computer lore.

While the story has its points of interest the writing by a mother, daughter team trying to emulate the “hard boiled school” of fiction does not quite make it.